


Bullet the Blue Sky

by Siria



Category: Thoughtcrimes
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-02-20
Updated: 2008-02-20
Packaged: 2017-10-03 21:05:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siria/pseuds/Siria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's a clear day in New York; the breeze is fresh enough to carry away the smells and sounds of eight million people living in intimacy with strangers, and when Brendan breathes in, he can taste the sharp hint of spring in the back of his throat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bullet the Blue Sky

**Author's Note:**

> For Amberlynne.

It's a clear day in New York; the breeze is fresh enough to carry away the smells and sounds of eight million people living in intimacy with strangers, and when Brendan breathes in, he can taste the sharp hint of spring in the back of his throat.

But it's still cold, it's still the first case he's worked since he came back from sick leave, and he's cursing those two months of down-time that made him forget just why he should always carry a pair of gloves balled up in his coat. Hard to fire a gun with numbed fingers, but he tightens his grip on it anyway as he inches his way slowly along behind the brick wall that's all that's hiding him from Atkinson. He can't see any of them from here—not Atkinson with the tangled belt of wires wrapped around him; not the knives in his hands; not the three children, dangling and kicking as they hang by their waists from the scrubby little tree.

Brendan can hear them crying, one of them—Maud, he thinks, judging by the fragile pitch of her voice; hipster parents, mother who wears too much jewellery and father whose hands shake when he talks about his missing four-year-old—rapidly approaching hysterics. Neither she nor Jacob nor Aliyah understand what's going on—Brendan knows that without having Freya here to translate those wordless cries for him—and it makes his chest hurt because he doesn't understand it either. He doesn't know how to explain to them what would make a chartered accountant with two kids of his own and a suburban mortgage and a Prius snatch three kids from a school and tie them to a tree in a park while making rambling, enraged calls to the police about the world tree and the end times.

All they know is enough to make them afraid; Brendan's afraid for them too, he's terrified, in the way he always is in those moments right before he decides. He double-checks the clip in his gun, and calculates angles and trajectories in his head, and hopes he'll be able to make that one shot he needs without Freya here to guide his hands and his thoughts.

Overhead, the wind kicks up with a rattle and hum that can only mean there are helicopters approaching, borne along on the strengthening wind and a need for sensationalism. Brendan knows that they're probably already an item on CNN's crawl, a focal point for moral outrage on Fox, and he curses whoever leaked it to the press already, spits out his consonants with all the rage he's going to need to take this guy down. This is not what he needed, it's not what those kids need, and he's either going to have to act now, or risk cutting their dead bodies down later from the branches of a dying tree.

He takes a moment and a breath: the brick wall is rough against his back, digging through the thin fabric of his shirt to scrape against a scar that's still fresh on his body and in his mind. A quick tilt of his head backwards, letting himself stare up at a sky that's a flawless, vaulting blue until he gets the tremor in his hands back under control; and when, decision made, he stands up, his aim is true, and his hands don't falter, not once.

 

  
_Art by [Amber](http://amberlynne.livejournal.com)._


End file.
